We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
It smells pretty bad. Does it matter politically? I don't know. People are inured to Dems finding ways to get rich through politics. Seems more typical for Repubs to make money first, then to get into politics as a hobby or as a give-back.
As Goodwin states, this is only China. No doubt the graft and corruption includes Ukraine, Romania, Kazakhstan and probably every other country where Air Force Two touched down between 2009 and 2016, or where a US government aircraft unloaded that gibbering, corrupt pervert and his son in the former's capacity as a Senator and official American envoy since 1973.
The RC Church has a long and ancient history of being politically-involved and taking sides. Politically, and financially. It's their strength and their weakness. Mind you, spoken as an olde-tyme Protestant.
However, after many years, even Protestants have gotten into political games. It is a shame, in my view, for church to become too worldly.
Wildfire is essential to many Western ecosystems. It's natural. Fire suppression leads to greater fires. No forest management can replace the good that fire does. Not so good for loggers or people in living in fire zones though. Just for ecosystems.
Time will tell. I am not sure what the campaign is about this year. Not clearly defined, because Trump has already solved many of the problems. Seems as if Trump is running on "America" and Biden is running on "Bad Orange Man Made Virus."
The lady reviewer found the book arousing. It's about sex, surrender (or sacrifice), and individuality or lack thereof in acts of surrender or sacrifice.
The author of the piece at Quillette says the book is not about sexual fantasies (male and female), but it is.
If one must always search out one’s own desires in order to correct them, then we are suddenly no longer in Aury’s tender world of flesh and fantasy, but rather in Orwell’s world of surveillance and paranoia. Once we moralize the inner landscapes of our own erotic imaginations, even our explicitly pornographic fantasies, what pleasures are left to us that aren’t merely ruthlessly self-serving? And what is left private? It was, after all, a moment of privacy and warmth within myself that I enjoyed while reading O on an airplane. It was a privacy that opened up my erotic imaginings, that deepened me and, ideally, planted the seeds of private fantasies to be shared and discovered with a lover. For sometimes even privacy is best shared with a co-conspirator in laughter, and imagination, and sensuality, and in secret touches and all things forbidden. Things wicked and sweet and brutal and tender. My own private Chateau.
This way of thinking isn’t just an idiosyncrasy of Weiss’. It is typical of someone in the throes of a strong cognitive dissonance that he or she cannot easily resolve. She hates Trump, but hates the danger on the left as well. What to do?
... the “psychiatric evaluations” that took up the next 40 pages were in response to a question that Fact sent to the nation’s psychiatrists from a list supplied by the American Medical Association: “Do you believe Barry Goldwater is psychologically fit to serve as President of the United States?” Ruth Adams of New York replied that she saw in the GOP candidate “a strong identification with the authoritarianism of Hitler, if not identification with Hitler himself,” and other responding psychiatrists echoed that theme. “I believe Goldwater has the same pathological make-up as Hitler, Castro, Stalin and other known schizophrenic leaders,” wrote Chester M. Johnson, Jr., of Long Beach, while Philadelphia’s Paul Fink observed that, like the Führer, the Republican nominee “appeals to the unconscious sadism and hostility in the average human being.” G. Templeton, of Glen Cove, New York, warned that “if Goldwater wins the Presidency, both you and I will be among the first into the concentration camps.”
Goldwater was a victim of media assassination, but the fact remains that he ran a terrible campaign.
Movie trailer:
Fire Experts Say Western States 